Trapped by Addiction, Many Farmers in Myanmar Fear a Looming Ban, Geoffrey York Finds PAR NAUK, MYANMAR -- As he puffs deeply on his opium pipe in the evening gloom of his thatched-roof hut, Kya Teh is wreathed in clouds of sweet, heavy smoke. And slowly his pain disappears. The 56-year-old farmer has been hooked on opium for 30 years. It began as a form of medicine. Like most of the impoverished villagers in this remote drug-producing land in northern Myanmar, opium is the only medicine he can afford. [continues 843 words]
Myanmar's city of Mong La is a garish mix of tribal army commanders and wealthy Chinese tourists MONG LA, MYANMAR -- Available soon: Luxury condos with a spectacular view of an immaculately groomed golf course, surrounded by an idyllic Asian landscape of rice paddies and lakes. Slight disadvantage: Your neighbours will be opium merchants, guerrilla leaders, drug lords, prostitutes, loan sharks and gamblers. Chinese-style capitalism has arrived in the heart of the Golden Triangle, the notoriously lawless region where much of the world's opium and heroin are produced, and the result is a bizarre boomtown of the nouveaux riches and the old warriors. [continues 748 words]
Deep in Asia's Golden Triangle, Geoffrey York Reports, a Ruthless Drug Lord Has Had an Epiphany PANG SANG, MYANMAR -- The drug lord arrives at the hotel in a Toyota Land Cruiser, unassumingly dressed in a checked shirt and green pants. The only hints of his wealth are his large sapphire ring and the servile bow of the waiter who hands him a cold towel. With his anonymous appearance and humble clothes, Bao Youxiang could be any middle-aged Asian businessman. One of his few hobbies is 10-pin bowling -- usually at a plush new alley across from the hotel. But when he isn't bowling, he is the kingpin of one of the world's biggest opium-producing regions, a rugged land of hilltop villages and poppy fields near the China-Myanmar border. [continues 895 words]
DAKA VALLEY -- In an isolated mountain valley in eastern Afghanistan, a farmer named Abdulrauf Ghazgai faces a dilemma that will help decide the future of the world heroin trade. Can he support his two wives and 16 children on a meagre crop of wheat and vegetables? Or should he secretly return to cultivating the opium poppies that were so profitable in the past? For years, he grew bright-red fields of poppies, selling the opium harvest to dealers who converted it into heroin and accelerated a cheap flood of the drug into Russia, Western Europe and North America. [continues 761 words]
Addiction Reaches Epidemic Proportions As Cheap Opium And Heroin Pour Out Of Neighbouring Afghanistan Tehran -- In his Tehran neighbourhood, few would have imagined that Ibrahim was an opium addict. The 60-year-old retired businessman is small and polite and neatly dressed. He tried opium for the first time at a party in Tehran, six years ago. A friend introduced him to the drug. Soon he was hooked. "I tried it once and it was, wow, taking me to a different world," he remembers. [continues 1035 words]
Iran patrols its Afghan border with 20,000 soldiers and security agents. Yet they are often outgunned by the firepower of smugglers who carry tonnes of opium and heroin across the desert in caravans of camels and four-wheel-drive vehicles. The smugglers are armed with machine guns, rocket launchers, anti-aircraft missiles, satellite telephones and night-vision equipment. They have killed nearly 3,000 Iranian soldiers and police officers in battles during the past decade, including 36 police officers who were tortured and killed by traffickers in November. [continues 279 words]
Dirt-Cheap Afghan Drugs Ravage Young People St. Petersburg -- Katya had it all. The beautiful daughter of a wealthy businessman and his lawyer wife, she was one of Russia's golden youth, the privileged elite of an impoverished society. She took her vacations in Paris and Prague. She hobnobbed with foreigners as a tour guide in St. Petersburg's palaces and museums. She was a final-year student at a prestigious law school. But Katya had a secret. Twice a day, she searched for a vein in her arms, prepared a needle, and injected a quarter-gram of heroin. [continues 1843 words]
